AccScience Publishing / BIJP / Volume 16 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.29228/beytulhikme.86761
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Thought Experiments in Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Sina's Flying Man and the Estimative Faculty

Aslı Üner Kaya1
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1 Gümüşhane Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Felsefe Bölümü 29000, Gümüşhane, Türkiye
Received: 6 August 2025 | Published online: 10 March 2026
© 2026 by the Author. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The nature and function of thought experiments, which have become an important part of philosophical and scientific discourse, are among the topics that have been researched with great interest not only by philosophers but also by historians of science, cognitive scientists and psychologists in recent years. Thought experiments, which we can trace back to the Pre-Socratics, are frequently encountered in the Middle Ages, especially in fields such as theology and natural philosophy. Imaginary scenarios designed by important figures in the Islamic world such as Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham and Ghazali provide important information about the way thought experiments were used in the period. Ibn Sina was the first philosopher to try to explain the psychological basis of thought experiments. The fundamental question he focuses on is: What is the source of the premises used in thought experiments? According to Ibn Sina, the source of thought experiments is wahm, an internal, sensory faculty that has no exact English equivalent but is usually translated as estimative faculty. My aim in this article is to focus on the faculty of illusion that Ibn Sina introduced while creating the psychological infrastructure of thought experiments and to reveal the role that this faculty plays in the formation of thought experiments.

Keywords
Thought experiments
Islamic philosophy
Ibn Sina
estimative faculty
the flying man.
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Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy, Print ISSN: 1303-8303, Published by AccScience Publishing